I’ve got my fare and just a trifle to spare

There were kids playing baseball in Central Park on Sunday morning. Jenny and I stood up on a bridge for a minute, watching the game and checking out the daffodils and squirrels. I love those sounds; of the kids’ voices and the bat smacking the ball. The hooting and whooping. How they echo in the big open space of the park and the noise is just part of the air around you.

It isn’t a secret that I’ve been having a rough time of things lately. Yesterday my to-do list started with FIND THERAPIST AND MAKE A GODDAMNED APPOINTMENT. I didn’t get to it (the Busy is fierce and unyielding) but I will. I am 37 years old and find myself reading a little too much into my fortune cookies (I cannot eat them, but I’m all over the message inside) and really, actually, earnestly, making a wish with my eyes closed like a little kid and throwing a shiny penny into a fountain — because the extra-shiny pennies have a better chance of granting your wish, do they not? I cry far too easily, I take things so personally, my feelings get hurt all the time, I overshare (LIKE NOW!), and I look forward to a drink after work and going to sleep in a way that tells me I need help.

I’m really grateful, though, that I’m not completely in the dark. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to stay in bed and never see anyone. I’m just sad. It’s maybe pointless, the things I’m sad over, because they just Are What They Are, and for me to wish for something different is for me to argue with reality and that’s always going to leave me losing. But I can’t figure out how to let go and move on. I’m stuck feeling like I made a rotten choice at a fork in the road way back (I am deeply sorry for the shitty metaphors — blame depression!) and I can see that path I want to be on, but I can’t fucking get over there.

Right now I need to get in my car and drive to work. My commute is on one of the very most beautiful highways in the world, as far as I’m concerned. No billboards. Green hills with live oak trees. A gorgeous monastery. Cows and egrets. Geese, wildflowers, daffodils, fog, blue and green mountains. Perfect curves. Thirty miles of that. On the way to work I will stop for coffee and while I drive I’ll listen to music and I will feel good. I will remember Yvonne’s reaction to the church bells early Saturday morning (they chimed at 6, and I heard from her bed: WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?! and that? was comic gold right there, and was so funny I know I can depend on it to get me through the darkest of times) and there’s also this.This will get me through if the bell thing seems not so funny.

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7 thoughts on “I’ve got my fare and just a trifle to spare”

The church bells is making me laugh. We were all laying in bed in our room too when they started and after what felt like 20 minutes we all started laughing, because seriously? isn’t the city noisy enough? WTF annoying church bells.